1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cleaning machine, such as a laundry cleaning machine having a treatment compartment housing and a driving unit compartment housing.
2) Description of Prior Art
Cleaning machines, which are used with non-aqueous cleaning mediums such as dry cleaning machines, for use with densified liquid treatment gas, for example carbon dioxide, are known. Such cleaning machines are usually equipped with a treatment chamber in which a drum is rotatably arranged for receiving objects to be cleaned, such as laundry, and a driving unit, which is operable to rotate the drum. In conventional cleaning machines, the driving unit is placed outside of the treatment chamber and acts on a shaft of the drum passing though a wall of the treatment chamber. Since it is difficult to properly seal the rotating shaft due to the high pressure inside the treatment chamber, the driving unit of more recent machines is placed inside the treatment chamber. The drum of the cleaning machine should be easily accessible for loading and unloading the laundry. Therefore the driving unit is usually located behind the drum in the treatment chamber of the cleaning machine.
A problem associated with these known cleaning machines is that the drum has to be removed in order to enable access to the driving unit, for example a motor and possibly a transmission, for service purposes or repairs. This is a time consuming and tedious operation, especially for machines running with densified liquid state treatment gas, such as carbon dioxide, where the components are robust and correspondingly heavy in order to withstand the high pressure in such machines. Furthermore, after removing the drum, the driving unit can only be reached through the washing chamber of the machine. Since the washing chamber usually is very narrow for an operator to crawl into, if at all possible, the access to the driving unit may nevertheless be restricted.